Weekend Box Office: Aladdin is the prince of Memorial Day Weekend
Exactly how many Aladdin-related puns can we cram into one sentence? Let’s see: It looks like Genie had a spare wish to grant Disney this past holiday weekend as Guy Ritchie’s live adaptation worked its magic on audiences and sailed (like…on a carpet) into the No. 1 spot. Hey, it could have been worse. We could have opined at the way Aladdin stepped into “a whole new world” with its $237.4 million global gross. Aren’t you pleased with our restraint? Anyway, this totally surpasses earlier predictions of a $100 million domestic haul by over $12 million. Considering the performances of some of Disney’s previous live-action incarnations, this is a smashing success. John Wick 3, Avengers: Endgame, and Detective Pikachu all shifted down one slot to second, third, and fourth places, respectively.
Sony and Screen Gems’ Brightburn—essentially a Superman alternate universe fanfic brought to life—premiered this weekend at No. 5 with a box office gross of $9.5 million. With such intense competition and a modest $6 million budget, it still incurred a decent outcome. Festival stand-out and Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut Booksmart landed at No. 6, earning $8.6 million after the holiday bump. The film’s box office performance—which some pegged as underwhelming—sparked an industry-wide conversation this past weekend about the number of factors stacked against it, despite largely glowing reviews (including ours). The debate was bolstered after Wilde’s call-to-action of sorts on Twitter as the film was getting “creamed by the big dogs.”
While we could go over each element that may or may not have contributed to this weekend’s outcome—like the decision to premiere the same weekend as a majorly anticipated big studio debut, or the fact that it had just over 2,500 screens to work with here—it’s important to consider that Booksmart’s opening weekend actually falls in line with the likes of The Edge Of Seventeen and The Perks Of Being A Wallflower. Would it have been extremely fun to see the Annapurna indie give any of this weekend’s top three contenders a real run for their literal money? Absolutely. Still, it’s pretty par for the course. Besides, there’s still time to check out the hilarious flick in theaters.
For a more detailed breakdown of this weekend’s box office, check out Box Office Mojo.